


Righteous Man

by distortedrain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Castiel Loves Dean Winchester, Dean Needs A Hug, Episode: s04e16 On the Head of a Pin, Gen, Guilty Dean, Hospitals, M/M, Sad Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 19:54:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10043579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distortedrain/pseuds/distortedrain
Summary: Cas helps Dean cope with the after effects of his dealing with Alastair.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to [Tumblr](http://distortedrain.tumblr.com/post/157766257134/righteous-man-destiel) for Dean Creations Challenge prompt, "Quotes About Dean: 'And it is written that the first seal shall be broken when a  
> righteous man sheds blood in hell. As he breaks, so shall it break.'  
> \- Alastair (4x16)"
> 
> No copyright infringement intented.
> 
> Un-beta'd.

He turned away. His head was spinning. It couldn’t be true, could it? Alastair was still talking but Dean wasn’t listening. All he could hear were Alastair’s previous words. 

“—front of the line. When we win, when we bring on the apocalypse and burn this earth down, we’ll owe it all to you, Dean Winchester.” Dean wasn’t looking, but he could sense the smug smirk on Alastair’s ugly face. Dean’s eyes fall shut. “Believe me, son, I wouldn’t lie about this. It’s kind of a...religious...sort of thing.” Alastair said that last part distractedly, as though he was just barely paying attention to the conversation, as though he had noticed something else. But Dean didn’t realise that—he was too busy trying to force down this sudden bout of shock.

“No,” said Dean. “I don’t think you are lying. But even if the demons do win—” Dean paused, raising Ruby’s knife. His voice was breaking. “—You won’t be there to see it.” 

He didn’t know what happened from that moment on. He didn’t know how, when he turned around, Alastair was right behind him, impossibly free from his bounds, grinning a broad, wicked grin.

“You should talk to your plumber about the pipes,” said Alastair. The blow he delivered was enough to knock Dean to the ground. 

Dean didn’t know where the blood was coming from at this point. His mouth? His nose? Both probably. The thought he could feel a cut on his eyebrow, too. Alastair hoisted him up to his knees by the collar of his shirt and held him half upright as he punched him in the face, once, twice—Dean lost count. Dean felt himself fall to the ground again. He blinked. His vision was swimming. A hand closed around his throat and pulled him back to his feet, and his back hit the hard surface of star where Alastair had previously been bound. His feet came off the ground. The hand around his throat was both keeping him standing and shoving him upwards, crushing his windpipe.

“You’ve got a lot to learn, boy,” Alastair purred. “So I’ll see you back in class, bright and early, Monday morning.”

Dean saw movement behind him. It looked like Cas, a little, but Dean’s vision was vignetting so much that he couldn’t be sure. Alastair looked behind him, and a moment later, Dean fell from his grasp. Dean never found out who it was that had come to confront Alastair, because he had passed out before he even hit the floor.

• • •

When Dean woke, he cracked his eye open just enough that he could vaguely make out his surroundings while not getting caught awake. He noticed several things. He was in a hospital. A breathing tube was tied to his head fitted into his mouth, and he could feel cool plastic forming a band around his head. He wondered why he had no brace around his neck, since it felt like Alastair had flattened his windpipe with his hand. A needle had been neatly placed in his wrist, which he could only guess was an IV drip. Through his peripheral, he could see Sam sitting by his bed, gnawing on his lip and bouncing his head. He seemed to be staring so intently at Dean’s chest that he didn’t even notice that Dean’s eyes were slightly open.

The sound of wings were Dean’s cue to shut his eyes. Judging by the sound of Sam exiting his room, it was probably Cas

. They were so far away that Dean had to strain his ears to hear them. 

“Sam—” Cas said.

“Get in there and heal him,” Sam interrupted angrily. “Miracle. Now.”

“I can’t.” Dean wondered what Cas meant by that. 

“You and Uriel _put_ him in there—”

“No.”

“—because you can’t keep a simple devil’s trap together,” Sam continued, ignoring Cas’ input. 

“I don’t know what happened,” Cas said. For someone who couldn’t display emotion, he sounded surprisingly sad. “That trap...it shouldn’t have broken. I am sorry.” 

“This whole thing was pointless, you understand that?” Sam said. He sounded much more angry, but he wasn’t shouting. It was more like he was controlling his rage (which Dean found much scarier, not that he would ever tell sam). “The demons _aren’t_ doing the hits. Something else is killing your soldiers.”

“Perhaps Alastair was lying,” Cas suggested, but he didn’t sound convinced. 

“No. He wasn’t.” With that, Sam left Cas in the hallway and sat back down at Dean’s side. Dean shut his eyes again, and at some point, the pretend sleep gave way to real sleep. 

• • •

When Dean woke again, Sam was gone, and Cas was accompanying Dean in his stead. The breathing tube was gone, and a nasal cannula was tucked behind his ears and settled on his upper lip, the small tubes feeling rather uncomfortable in his nostrils.

It only took a moment for Cas to realise that he was awake. “Are you alright?” the angel asked.

For some reason, the question annoyed Dean. How could he ask Dean that? Cas’ mistake had landed him in the hospital in the first place, and he had the gall to ask if he was _alright_? “No thanks to you,” Dean grumbled, but he sounded like he had a stuffy nose, which really detracted from the ungrateful-indignant vibe he was trying to give off. He felt some petty satisfaction in saying it, even though he knew that Cas couldn’t completely appreciate the tone behind the words. 

“You need to be more careful,” Cas said. If he hadn’t said it so emotionlessly, Dean would have called it a scolding. But coming from Cas’ mouth, it sounded more like a fact. In that case, Dean had a fact for him, too. 

“You need to learn how to manage a damn devil’s trap,” Dean retorted tiredly. 

“That’s not what I mean,” Cas replied, and Dean couldn’t help but wonder what he had meant. But Dean’s ponderings were cut short with Cas’ next words. “Uriel is dead.”

“Was it the demons?”

“It was disobedience. He was working against us.” It didn’t tell Dean much of anything, other than that it was an angel who had killed Uriel. Dean wondered if he had the same fate ahead of him if you chose to defy the angels’ orders. Then, something else came to mind. Dean paused for a long moment before speaking his mind as though psyching himself up for the answer he was bound to get, one he already knew to be true but just didn’t want to have confirmed. 

“Is it true? Did I break the first seal?” Dean’s voice cracked. “Did I start all this?” 

“Yes,” Cas said hesitantly, as though afraid to see Dean’s reaction. Dean turned his head away from Cas. “When we discovered Lilith’s plan for you, we laid siege to hell and we fought our way to get to you before you—”

“Jump-started the apocalypse,” Dean supplied.

“And we were too late.”

“Why didn’t you just leave me there, then?” Dean clenched his jaw, trying to cease the tremble of his lips and the sudden well of tears in his eyes. He was beginning to think that that would have been the better option. What good was he doing up on the surface, anyway? Besides, if anything, he _deserved_ to be down in hell. 

“It’s not— _blame_ that falls on you, Dean, it’s fate.” There was a long pause before he said his next words. “The righteous man who begins it is the only one who can finish it. _You_ have to stop it.” 

A pressure was beginning to bloom in Dean’s chest. It felt like a great hand was seizing his heart and squeezing with all his heart. If Dean had been in the mood, he might have joked that it was the hand of god. He was always one for silly puns. 

“Lucifer,” Dean whispered. “The apocalypse? What does that mean?” He sensed Cas preparing to zap away and cried, “Hey! Don’t you go disappearing on me, you son of a bitch, what does that mean!”

“I don’t know,” Cas told him. 

“Bull,” Dean said angrily. 

“I _don’t_ ,” Cas said firmly. “Dean, they don’t tell me much. I know our fate rests with you.” 

“Well, then you guys are screwed,” Dean said in utter defeat. The tears that had remained at bay until this moment were beginning to well up, and Dean knew that no amount of blinking would keep them from spilling. “I can’t do it, Cas. It’s too big. Alastair was right. I’m not all here. I’m not str—I’m not strong enough.” A pause. There was no stopping the tears now, and he could barely keep the tremble of his lip in check enough to get his words out. “Well I guess I’m not the man either of our dads wanted me to be...Find someone else...it’s not me.” 

Dean turned his head just in time for the first tear to spill without Cas seeing. Not that it did much good, because he sniffled quite loudly right after, which made it quite obvious that he was in tears. 

“Dean.” The way Cas said it made Dean almost believe that the angel had something of a soul, some inking of tenderness and compassion and understanding to offer Dean, especially now that this feeling of guilt coupled with responsibility was growing too large and heavy to bear. “This isn’t your fault, Dean.”

“Sure,” Dean scoffed. 

“It isn’t,” Cas insisted. He shuffled in his seat for a moment, looking quite unsure of what to do next. Finally, he raised himself up just a bit and grasped the arms of the chair, pulling the entire unit closer to Dean’s bed. Dean turned his head back to Cas, who was staring at him with wide eyes. 

“Yeah, definitely, Cas,” Dean sneered. He could feel his sadness ebbing away into anger. “It’s not like I made a deal with my brother to bring him back from the dead, got sent to hell, and only managed to hold out for thirty years before I started torturing souls myself which, _apparently_ , is the first seal to kick off the apocalypse. So how could any of this be _my fault_?”

“Dean,” Cas begged. And oh, if that didn’t do something to Dean. Cas was a cruel—albeit unintentionally—being at worst, and an apathetic being at best. But Dean had never seen this version of Cas before. The angel had mentioned earlier that he was beginning to develop attachments to he and Sam, but Dean had interpreted that as a sense of responsibility, not as genuine _caring_. Cas’ eyes were wide and blue (and admittedly, very lovely). Somehow, those very eyes carried more emotion than they ever had in the past. Perhaps it had taken Dean nearly dying for Cas to actually express that he gave a shit about him. 

Dean craned his neck from his pillow. “Cas, I don’t wanna hear it.”

“You need to,” Cas asserted, and with a not-so-subtle groan (that Cas ignored), Dean’s head fell back onto the pillow. “Dean, you couldn’t have known. _We_ didn’t know, or somebody would have stopped you from making that deal to save your brother. Well, perhaps not. Uriel was working to start the apocalypse, after all. Perhaps that deal was his plan after all.”

Dean had to butt in. “Even if I hadn’t made that deal,” he said quietly, “my dad would still have been down there. And he would have cracked eventually. Or maybe, they’d have waited until the next righteous man got sent to hell.”

“Perhaps that’s true, Dean,” Cas agreed (oh, he _really_ liked to say Dean’s name), “but I won’t let you fault yourself for what _did_ happen. It was both selfless and selfish of you to give your life for Sam, Dan. But you thought you were doing the right thing. You couldn’t have known what you had started.”

It was so unusual for Castiel to be delivering words of comfort that Dean was torn between crying and laughing. It was just so un- _Cas_. Maybe the guy had finally lost it. 

A tiny huff of laughter escaped Dean’s mouth. Cas looked startled. “What is it,” he asked, his voice betraying a hint of alarm. 

“Well, it’s just _weird_ ,” Dean said, giggling (though he would never admit to committing such a girlish act). “It’s like you’re possessed, man. The Cas I know doesn’t even know what a smile is.” He giggled again, and the giggles turned to laughs. Through it all, Cas had a vaguely disconcerted look on his face, but a vaguely fond sparkle in his eyes. And then—and then Cas, Cas who was acting particularly human for someone who was so _un_ -human, reached out. He skimmed the rough bed sheets covering the cot, fingers moving in the direction towards where Dean’s hand was clutching the sheets. The moment their skin brushed, Dean’s laughter ceased, and he stared, wide-eyed, as the angel pried Dean’s fingers from the fabric and laced them with his own. 

“You wanna know what he said to me?” Dean said quietly after a beat. “He said, ‘And it is written that the first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood in hell. As he breaks, so shall it break.’”

“You’re not weak, Dean,” Cas said, somehow hitting the mark of what Dean was thinking. 

Dean closed his eyes and tilted his head away from Cas, and the angel just kept holding his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you if you made it to the end of this train wreck. Please leave kudos and comments :)


End file.
